City Of Bones

fingers.
    “He’s around. Probably sleepin’ in the bed. Why?”
    “Well, we’re going to call Animal Control and they’ll come get him to take care of him. You’re going to have to come with us. We’re going to place you under arrest now. And we’ll talk more at the police station.”
    Delacroix dropped his hands and seemed upset.
    “No. Animal Control won’t take care of him. They’ll gas him the minute they find out I won’t be coming back.”
    “Well, we can’t just leave him here.”
    “Mrs. Kresky will take care of him. She’s next door. She can come in and feed him.”
    Bosch shook his head. The whole thing was foundering because of a cat.
    “We can’t do that. We have to seal this place until we can search it.”
    “What do you have to search it for?” Delacroix said, real anger in his voice now. “I’m telling you what you need to know. I killed my son. It was an accident. I hit him too hard, I guess. I…”
    Delacroix put his face back into his hands and tearfully mumbled, “God… what did I do?”
    Bosch checked Edgar; he was writing. Bosch stood up. He wanted to get Delacroix to the station and into one of the interview rooms. His anxiety was gone now, replaced by a sense of urgency. Attacks of conscience and guilt were ephemeral. He wanted to get Delacroix locked down on tape-video and audio-before he decided to talk to a lawyer and before he realized that he was talking himself into a 9 × 6 room for the rest of his life.
    “Okay, we’ll figure out the cat thing later,” he said. “We’ll leave enough food for now. Stand up, Mr. Delacroix, we’re going to go.”
    Delacroix stood up.
    “Can I change into something nicer? This is just old stuff I was wearing around here.”
    “No, don’t worry about that,” Bosch said. “We’ll bring you clothes to wear later on.”
    He didn’t bother telling him that those clothes wouldn’t be his. What would happen was that he’d be given a county jail-issued jumpsuit with a number across the back. His jumpsuit would be yellow, the color given to custodies on the high-power floor-the murderers.
    “Are you going to handcuff me?” Delacroix asked.
    “It’s department policy,” Bosch said. “We have to.”
    He came around the coffee table and turned Delacroix so he could cuff his hands behind his back.
    “I was an actor, you know. I once played a prisoner in an episode of The Fugitive. The first series, with David Janssen. It was just a small role. I sat on a bench next to Janssen. That’s all I did. I was supposed to be on drugs, I think.”
    Bosch didn’t say anything. He gently pushed Delacroix toward the trailer’s narrow door.
    “I don’t know why I just remembered that,” Delacroix said.
    “It’s all right,” Edgar said. “People remember the strangest things at a time like this.”
    “Just be careful on these steps,” Bosch said.
    They led him out, Edgar in front and Bosch behind him.
    “Is there a key?” Bosch asked.
    “On the kitchen counter there,” Delacroix said.
    Bosch went back inside and found the keys. He then started opening cabinets in the kitchenette until he found the box of cat food. He opened it and dumped it out onto the paper plate under the table. There was not very much food. Bosch knew he would have to do something about the animal later.
    When Bosch came out of the trailer Edgar had already put Delacroix into the rear of the slickback. He saw a neighbor watching from the open front door of a nearby trailer. He turned and closed and locked Delacroix’s door.

Chapter 36
    BOSCH stuck his head into Lt. Billets’s office. She was turned sideways at her desk and working on a computer at a side table. Her desk had been cleared. She was about to go home for the day.
    “Yes?” she said without looking to see who it was.
    “Looks like we got lucky,” Bosch said.
    She turned from the computer and saw it was Bosch.
    “Let me guess. Delacroix invites you in and just sits down and confesses.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “Just about.”
    Her eyes grew wide in surprise.
    “You are fucking kidding me.”
    “He says he did it. We had to shut him up so we could get him back here on tape. It was like he had been waiting for us to show up.”
    Billets asked a few more questions and Bosch ended up recapping the entire visit to the trailer, including the problem they had in not having a working tape recorder with which to take Delacroix’s confession. Billets grew concerned and annoyed, equally with